When director Guillermo del Toro spoke with Steve at the Saturn Awards, he was very pessimistic that his 3D adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness would ever come to fruition due to its lack of commercial viability.  He explained, "It is very difficult for the studios to take the step of doing an R-rated tentpole with a tough ending [and] no love story."  You know, unless the man who produced and directed the two highest-grossing movies ever offers his services.

Deadline reports that James Cameron will produce the film, and was a major selling point in securing funds from Universal --- del Toro will begin pre-production in the coming weeks with a summer 2011 3D shoot in mind.  More after the jump:

This has long been a passion project for del Toro, who first set up the adaptation at DreamWorks in 2004.  Del Toro has been tied up by The Hobbit for the past two years, but freed up space in his calendar when he departed the project in May.  Del Toro made a big splash at Comic-Con with the announcement that he was spearheading a reboot of The Haunted Mansion at Disney, but currently his only official duties are writing and producing with the option to direct.

The director has expressed the desire to adapt his "favorite novel" Frankenstein for the screen, but took advantage of Cameron's interest in the project to return to At Mountains of Madness for his next directorial effort.

Here's a brief synopis of Lovecraft's novella:

The story is written in first-person perspective by the geologist William Dyer, a professor from Miskatonic University. He writes to disclose hitherto unknown and closely kept secrets in the hope that he can deter a planned and much publicized scientific expedition to Antarctica. On a previous expedition there, a party of scholars from Miskatonic University, led by Dyer, discovered fantastic and horrific ruins and a dangerous secret beyond a range of mountains taller than the Himalayas. [Wikipedia]